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The Bastardmaker was watching me carefully, obvious lust in his eyes. He wasn’t even bothering to hide it. I swear to the Gods, he mouthed “Asherah” as he kept his eyes on me, focusing on my bared shoulder, right where the cloth had fallen and exposed my collarbone. He reached a hand between his legs, and I swallowed back bile, but then his fingers wrapped around a gray velvet pouch hanging from his belt. He untied it and tossed it at me.
The pouch fell to the ground between my feet, the coins inside clinking and thunking against each other.
Had he really thought I would hold my hands out? That I would attempt to catch money and allow my tunic to fall? And the disrespect—the disrespect of offering money to me—and like this! If I ever found myself alone with him, with a dagger between us…I couldn’t be held accountable for my actions.
The Imperator bent before me, snatching the coin pouch off the ground. He walked it over to Rhyan and slapped it on the table before him, the metals crashing together as they hit the smooth marble surface. “As the apprentice trains the novice with knowledge, so the apprentice outfits the novice in the clothes and weapons they will need,” he said, mimicking the sacred words spoken at the Oath Ceremony, the words that had been spoken before Rhyan and I had been joined. I’d been nearly naked then, and he’d dressed me for the first time as a soturion.
“Buy her a tunic that’s a little sturdier,” said the Imperator. “One that can withstand opening and closing for punishment. During the next three months, I believe her grace will need it.”
Rhyan eyed the pouch, nostrils flaring. Then he sat back, folded his muscled arms across his chest, and stared back at the Imperator.
“I train her. That’s it. She can do her own shopping.”
The Imperator laughed and returned to my side. His hands were crossed behind his back. He stood close to me. Too close.
“Again, apologies for my brother. The commotion. But a point had to be made.”
I stiffened, icy cold fear washing over me. My body went numb. His hand was on my back. His hand was on my fucking back!
“Soturion Lyriana has no power.” He pressed his palm into my spine. “No magic. Her own aunt, the Master of Education, had no choice but to expel her from her own country’s Mage Academy. Let’s not forget that any breach of the contract we made, any special favors, any skipping of classes, of clinics, any being late,” his fingers traced across my bandage; he tapped lightly, moving and poking until he found a lash wound, “is a breach of contract.” I sucked in a breath, tensing as he leaned closer, his breath disgustingly hot against my ear. “A real soturion would never cry out.” He pressed one finger into my wound.
I stumbled forward. Tears welled behind my eyes. My tunic slipped down. Rhyan shifted so fast in his seat, he seemed to be in two places at once.
I tried to hold his gaze, to will him not to move. His green eyes bore into me, his knuckles whitening on the table, the muscle in his jaw working as his fury blazed. I shook my head at him.
“You were punished, Soturion Lyriana, for doing exactly what you swore to me you wouldn’t,” the Imperator said. A second finger punctured my skin, his nail piercing through the bandage into the wound.
I gasped for breath, my vision turning white before I realized my legs were shaking with the effort to keep from crying, to continue standing.
“And then,” the Imperator added a third finger, and my stomach twisted with nausea as my back screamed with pain, “not even a day later, I get word that you’re once again guilty of the very same infraction that led to these.”
He pulled his fingers away. My back was on fire, aching and sore, the wounds furious from his touch. There was another rip as the bandage was torn off my back. I gasped, some unintelligible sound slipping past the barrier of my sealed lips. Blood dripped down my spine, and I stumbled forward, dizzy from the pain.
“You fucking—!” Rhyan yelled, anguish in his voice. There was a punch, a slap of flesh against flesh, and then the metallic sound of swords being drawn, one by one down the row of soturi lining the wall.
One wolf stared down Rhyan, grabbing his arm, his blade unsheathed.
“Get off!” Rhyan spoke in his High Lord voice. He punched, sending the soturion back against the wall. “I still have to fucking train her, don’t I? Put your Godsdamned knives down.”
But the Imperator wasn’t listening. He was too focused on me, on my exposed body and my opened wounds. “These truly do look so painful,” he said, leaning back. His eyes ran up and down my body, tracking the blood as it dripped. There was a splash of blood on the ground, a splotch of red against the pristine black marble. “My sympathies for what you’re experiencing grow so much now that I’m seeing it up close. Don’t you feel the same, Waryn?”
“They look like they hurt,” said the Bastardmaker, glee in his voice.
“Is that not the point?” snarled the Ready. “She broke some rules, and she was punished multiple times for her infractions. This is over! Tell your men to stand down in my house, or my soturi will be within every legal right to stop the threat.”
The Imperator waved a dismissive hand at his soturi, and one by one the wolves re-sheathed their swords. The last wolf who’d come for Rhyan licked blood dripping down his chin.
Aemon stepped forward, black mist curling from his aura, his brows furrowed together. “And your highness, you will not touch her grace again.”
The Imperator grinned, a wolfish, toothy smile. “I have no intention. In fact, I never have. You were the one holding the whip, Arkturion Aemon. Now, to come to my point. She went home early. Why? Soturion Rhyan?”
“She needed time to heal her injuries. The injuries you yourself ordered,” he said through gritted teeth. His good eyebrow was drawn to a tight point. The scar across his other eyebrow seemed to have become redder and more pronounced. “What’s so Godsdamned hard to understand here? This isn’t a search for the lost shards of Valalumir. It’s basic soturion care. She was lashed, now those lashes need to heal. That takes time, that takes rest. Every soturion knows this.”
“Yes, except I’ve never seen another soturion take time off from training after a lashing to rest,” said the Imperator.
“We all know the lashes are infused with magic to cause more pain to Lumerians,” said Arianna. “They are designed to hurt. They are meant to create a lengthier healing cycle.”
“Right. For Lumerians with magic,” the Imperator’s voice rose again, “Lumerians whose bodies need a bit more pain to counteract their strength, their power. I say this again—if you are going to continue to flout this gift that has been given to you, maybe this is not the right place for you, your grace. I can’t even imagine the pain you’re experiencing—it’s certainly far worse than it should be.”
